St. Andrew's» Reviews

Parental Review: Walk the World’s Rim

papajohn — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:40:29 +0000

As one who read Walk the World’s Rim aloud, I rate the book quite highly: a seven or eight out of ten. I remembered the names of Panfilo de Navarrez and Esteban from Florida History back when I was nine years old, but that’s all they were to me: names. Reading Walk the World’s Rim helped me to see these historical figures as real people rather than just names in a textbook. Traveling such great distances, and for so long, as Esteban and the Spaniards did, is hard to fathom, and this book helps the reader to understand what such a journey must have been like. Baker combines historical fact with vivid, imaginative descriptions of people, terrain, and events, putting the reader right in the middle of history. Centering the story around Esteban, a Moroccan who was sold into slavery to the Spanish as a youth, also provides a necessary corrective to the story as often told in the history books, in which such topics as slavery and genocide are often whitewashed. In all, Walk the World’s Rim is a well-rounded, enjoyable read.

Our Library entry for Walk The World’s Rim.

Here is Birdie’s student review.

Book Review: Om-kas-toe

Birdie — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:20:00 +0000

Om-kas-toe by Kenneth Thomasma is a book about a boy named Twin Boy who one day goes out of the village with his dad to collect sticks for arrows and finds a raven with a broken wing. The bird fell out of its nest in the wind. In the summer time it is time to move to their summer camp. Along the way a dog spots some deer and ran towards them. The baby that was on the travois is thrown off and into some bushes. For about an hour everyone is looking without any luck. Twin Boy hears the raven squawk and runs towards it but his twin gets there first. The raven found the baby. That night the oldest of the tribe elders stands up and says, “Twin Boy, your bird found the baby so now you will be called Om-kas-toe, meaning raven.” Om-kas-toe is very good with animals.

I like this book because the boy goes on many adventures with the raven. The raven and his sister join him in many adventures. I would recommend this book because it is an exciting read.

–Birdie, age 9

Our Library entry for Om-kas-toe.

Book Review: Walk The World’s Rim

Birdie — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:05:34 +0000

Walk The World’s Rim by Betty Baker is a book about a boy named Chakoh who lived in a village with hardly any food. He lives with his mother, father, three Spaniards, and a tall black man named Estiban. He leaves his home to learn of a new god in Mexico to bring back the news and save his people.

I did and did not like this book. I did like this book because it has very small cliff hangers and I like cliff hangers. I did not like this book because it is long and boring, in my opinion. I would recommend it because it teaches history about life long ago.

–Birdie, age 9

Our Library entry for Walk The World’s Rim.

Papa’s review.

Startwrite from the start

Rae — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:59:56 +0000

Recently Jessica over at Balancing Everything wrote about making writing paper for her children to practice handwriting. I did that a number of years ago myself. Not being able to find exactly what I wanted for my children I got to work in my word processor and made what I wanted and I even got all happy with it and made a page for each child’s level. At that time I had three different sheets for handwriting levels. Jessica’s post reminded me of those days and that I don’t do that anymore.

Then one day I found a really cool program called StartWrite. This nifty little program allows me to create and print handwriting worksheets for them. Not only can I print worksheets for them, I can print plain paper for them as well.

Want cute graphics? Go for it! While there are some included with the program you can use your own as well, just browse to the file and choose it to add to your page. Large fonts? sure! Small Fonts? why not! Dotted fonts? Dashed fonts? Starter dots? Directional arrows? Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes.

download a sample

Let me take a list off the website itself and show you just a few things it can do.

Choose Handwriting Fonts including Manuscript (similar to Zaner-Bloser), Manuscript-Simple (similar to Zaner-Bloser, Simplified), Modern Manuscript (similar to D’Nealian) and Italic (similar to Getty-Dubay or Portland Italic).
Use Cursive Fonts that correspond to the above-mentioned educational fonts, for the advanced student.
Expand Font Sizes anywhere from 1/4″ to 2″.
Choose Shading of Fonts from Dark to Light for all levels of learners.
Choose From Four Guide Line Options: Top, Middle, Bottom and Descender. Change any line to solid or dashed and colors to red, black or blue.
Type dotted, dashed, or solid letters.
Starting Dot to help in your child’s learning of letters.
Stroke Arrows for proper letter formation.
Clip Art Included or import your own JPG or BMP clip art to make pages fun…
Print Worksheets on Plain Paper from your own printer–no hassle and no expensive special paper needed.
Print in Landscape or Portrait for your convenience and creativity.
Custom Lessons are included (or can be downloaded free from Homepage) for quick and easy lesson preparation time.
Use Startwrite’s other Standard Word Processing Functions like cut, copy, paste, new, open, save, print, zoom, etc. for extra ease in preparation.
Utilize 100,000-Word Spell Checker for accurate worksheet preparation.
Save Lessons for future use to create your own curriculum in minutes, and save time and effort when repeating lessons.
Use Spanish and Math Fonts* for even more learning potential.
Create a Variety of Pages like phonics pages, spelling pages, a letter to a friend, scrapbook pages, etc. for more practice and fun while learning handwriting.
And much more.

Here’s the full list of available fonts: Manuscript, New American Cursive, ManScrip2, Cursive-Simple, Modern Manuscript, Modern Cursive, Italic, Italic Cursive, PLMR, PLMR Cursive, HWOT, HWOT Cursive.

Along with each of these fonts and all the available variations for printing sheets with these fonts you can add text boxes that will utilize any font already installed on your computer. So if you want to type up some instructions for your work sheets you can use any font on your computer for that. You can even use multiple options on the same page simply by creating a new box to format. And the formatting is as easy as clicking an option button right at the top of the screen.

Samples

samples are .pdf; you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to see them.

This program is available to both the PC and Mac markets and is currently priced at $39.95US. I bought this program a few years ago for my PC (you know, back before I was a cool kid with a MacBookPro). I e-mailed them about switching the licensing code to my Mac OS and the customer service they provide is spectacular; not only was the e-mail reply speedy, but the response was personal. I needed to follow up with a phone call for making the switch (requested by company) and Ms. C. (I did not get permission to use her name) was very courteous and helpful.

Get yourself a FREE TRIAL

The Free Trial Version of Startwrite is a Fully Functioning, Complete Program. You are allowed to use it 1 time with all the features. After the first time, then several of the letters and the Spell Checker are deactivated, but all other functions will still work.

Disclaimer: this is not a paid advertisement for this program; I was not requested to write this review. I am writing about this program simply because I believe in it and that it has been a great benefit to our homeschooling. However the link above is an affiliate link. School licensing is offered as well to private and public schools.